Groan.

I was walking through campus yesterday when I came upon a large sign emphasizing the dangers of cigarettes. It was one of the ones where they show all the harmful things that are in cigarettes, like arsenic, tar, ammonia, etc. Something like this, except the one on campus was 10 feet long and had double the amount of items identified:
And just as I walked by, I heard a Physical Plant worker say to his buddy:

"That's crap. If all that stuff was really in cigarettes, they wouldn't be able to sell them."

Sigh.

Warning: Rant Ahead

I was clicking through the offers for freecycle in my email today when I noticed a trend that really made me angry.

People are putting their pets up for adoption and trying to give them away. Some of the reasons?

• "Our children are all teenagers now & nobody spends time with her anymore."
• "The only reason I need a new home for him is because he loves to run and play and I don't have a fence." Of course, the next sentence in this one was "Please contant me if intersted." Seriously?
• "We are getting rid of her because we just don't have the time for her."
• "My reason for trying to rehome them is that I am very pregnant and they have become a tripping hazard for me." (A golden retriever mix and a pit bull mix? You won't be pregnant in 2 months!)
  
• "I have to get rid of them due to the fact that I am moving to an apartment and they don't allow dogs where I am going."

I find this ridiculous. When you get a pet, you are making a serious, 10-20 year commitment. It is unacceptable to simply find a new home for a pet because it would be easier to not have a pet. When Mitch and I moved, we simply crossed rental property off our list if it didn't allow pets. We wouldn't get rid of our dog child because we could find a cuter apartment without him. And we certainly didn't get rid of him because we couldn't find the time to be a good pet owner. We make time.

Before I get an angry email from my one reader, I will agree that some instances do necessitate finding your animal a new home. If you move abroad, your pet might be required to be quarantined for up to a year. If you live alone and are pregnant, you can't medically clean a cat's litter box. If you have children and your dog becomes aggressive, you should protect your children. And I'm sure there are a number of other, quite valid reasons.

But the willingness to give pets up when they simply become inconvenient really makes me mad. Before you get rid of a pet, try this: put up a fence, exercise your dog, carve a half hour out of your schedule to play with it, find an apartment that allows pets. Basically, take some responsibility, people!

Phew, I feel better. What are your thoughts on the matter?

911, What Is Your Emergency?

On our way home from my parents' house last night, I had the opportunity to do two things I had never, never ever done before.

I called 911, and I called the Oklahoma Highway Patrol.

For two completely unrelated incidents. Talk about an exciting drive home.

It started innocently enough. We were driving down Waterloo toward I-35 when we saw smoke. And where there's smoke, there's fire. And where there is fire in late June, there is probably an idiot teenager running away with a *mostly* full box of bottle rockets.

Someone had caught a very large tree and a sign for the housing addition on fire. Big, bright, orange flames shot up, only 8 feet from a large group of cedar trees. Danger!

So I called 911 on my cell phone, after a moment of panic in which I thought there would be no way for the mysterious 911 person to know where I was. Silly Valerie, technology is amazing. The fire department was already on its way. Success!

Mitch and I continued home, talking in amazement about the fire and calling emergency crews and blah blah blah.

Until we nearly drove over a very large dead deer on Highway 33. It stretched the entire length of the other lane, and its head was sticking into our lane. We were able to swerve and avoid it, but felt this just might be a safety concern for all those folks driving the other way.

*55 for the Oklahoma Highway Patrol and a quick explanation later, we were home safely and went straight to bed.

It's hard work saving lives, you know?

Love, Twoo Love.

Mitch and I are off to a wedding this weekend.

Mitch's friend Dustin

and my friend Megan

are getting married!

These two met at my birthday party, so I'm going to claim responsibility for their happiness and future babies and all of that.

See at this birthday party, there were some drinks. And many people had many drinks. Lovely Megan had just enough drinks to make her Silly Megan. Silly Megan thought it would be a good idea to sit on a styrofoam ice chest since all the chairs were taken. Silly Megan!

The ice chest exploded, sending ice, water and beer everywhere. Dustin, being the gentleman that he is, grabbed a towel and helped with the cleanup efforts. Despite being mortified, Megan must have made an impression that night, because two weeks later, they had their first date!
So, they're pretty adorable and we can't wait to be a part of the beginning of their married life. Congrats you two!

And don't worry, we'll bring a plastic ice chest from now on.

Extra, Extra!

Time for Valerie's life update, which one could technically argue is really the only point of having a blog....hmm.

We've been through some major changes in the Naked Wifedom lately.
1. We got another dog.
Her name is Scooter, she's a very cuddly and soft black lab. That's a labrador retriever for those of you who, well....I hope no one needed to be told that. If you did, here's a picture of what black labs look like. Also, here's your sign.
Scooter looks a lot like this dog in the picture, except way more cool. This coolness is mostly due to her orange collar and OSU dog bone shaped tag with her name on it. I would have included a picture, but I somehow lost my camera battery charger in the move. Just think of this as me contributing to the development of your imagination...or something like that.

2. Speaking of animals, our neighbor finally moved in. We were a little worried it might be a couple frat guys who would be throwing up in our nearly communal backyard all the time, but really it was Kathy, the veterinarian. Kathy is 25 like me, but unlike me, she's a graduate of Texas A&M vet school, making her a doctor.

Unfortunately for us, Kathy is a large-animal vet who will be working on the "Food Animal and Fiber" rotation as an intern at OSU's vet school. If you're as confused as I was, you're really confused right now. Food and Fiber means all those animals who are raised for food (cows, sheep, pigs, cats [I kid!]) as well as llamas and alpacas (fiber animals, hey it all makes sense!). I guess vets in Texas won't touch llamas, so there's a lucrative market for a Texas vet who works with fiber animals.

Learn something new every day.

3. Ikea exploded on my bedroom. Mitch and I bought a bed and 2 nightstands from Ikea when we were in Dallas for the George Strait concert. Unfortunately, we had to grab the last headboard from the store that day, and when we arrived home 5 hours later and I was about to pee myself out of excitement, it was broken. I cried. Honestly. 4 months of anticipation down the toilet!

So the next weekend, while Mitch was at a bachelor party watching strippers fishing, Mom and I ventured down to Dallas again to return it....and buy a million other things. That store is addictive, I swear.

But, as a reward for making it a year (almost) with Mitch, Mom bought me a dresser and two lamps. And a microplane grater. And an ambiance light. Our bedroom officially looks like the bedroom of a married couple and not a skeezy college couple. It's divine. The nice result is that I make the bed every morning now because I actually care about how it looks.

Oh look! Another great opportunity to use your imagination to picture our bedroom!

Sigh, ok I'll find the battery replacement soon.

An open letter to M.B.

Does anyone remember this? My very own real-life reporting controversy? Well, I thought it was over, but I recently received a message from MB, asking that I remove his name from my blog post. There were a few other choice tidbits, but he asked that I not include his message on my blog. I will, however, share my response. This blog is a documentation of my life, and I will not censor my life for your comfort.

Dear MB,
I do realize the power that the internet has. But what you need to realize, and what seems to be missing from your message, is any culpability for your role in this situation. When this situation arose, I didn't get a message from you asking for the article to be removed. Rather, you provided your mother with inaccurate and incomplete information that she then used to attempt to have the article removed. This put my credibility at question, and I'm sure you can understand how I would protect my reputation and credibility vigorously.

Was I angry that you claimed to have no previous knowledge that the article would be published when our phone conversation and facebook messaging showed the opposite? Very. If you refuse to admit that you were informed of the potential for publishing during the phone interview, I can't prove otherwise. But I can, and did, prove that you were informed through facebook message two days before the article was published. If you had any objections, that would have been the time to voice them.

There are quite a few things about this incident that anger me, but the greatest is the fact that you seem incapable of accepting any culpability for the potential damage to your job prospects. I was not the one who was arrested and charged with a felony. I reported the facts that I gained through public records. I reported the fair and honest truth. You were not misquoted or misrepresented. To claim that I "want to destroy any future career hopes" you have or "seem intent on ruining your future," that is ridiculous and offensive to me. The only thing that could ruin your chances of getting a job is your own mistake.

I will replace your name on my blog post with initials, because I do ultimately want every one of my fellow OSU graduates to succeed. We are all part of the same university family. I will not remove the post, because I feel it is important to leave my defense of my reputation online.

Do not, for any reason, view this removal as justification of your actions in trying to handle this matter. Your behavior has been incredibly immature and unprofessional. Giving your mother incomplete and inaccurate information, allowing your mother to handle the situation for you, leaving me this juvenile message with accusations about my desire for you to fail in your professional life?

Grow up.

Sincerely,
The Naked Wife

Still not your wife: the saga continues

I got another email from my our illustrious Congressional liason. (See Part 1 and Part 2 if you need background.)

Apparently, I need to kick in some money for gift certificates for 'our' son's soccer coach.

I think the time has come to start emailing this guy back.

Any suggestions?

Higher Liar, Pants on Fire!

Yesterday, I got a phone message from Barbara Allen, the new O'Colly adviser. She said something along the lines of "I've got a situation here that I wanted to talk to you about."

Of course, I was interested immediately...and a little bit obsessed and worried. Neurotic much? What could it be? I gave them my newsroom key back, didn't I? I never fired someone that could now claim sexual harassment, did I?

As it turns out, I wrote a story many months ago for my public affairs reporting class. And this article was published on the front page of the O'Colly. Go me!

In this article (which is supremely bad-ass, let me tell you what), I write about MB, an OSU student who was charged with felony marihuana possession after OSU police found 1/5 of an ounce in his dorm room. Felony because he was on a college campus, and Oklahoma law allows police to charge felony possession if the person is within 1000 feet of a school or park.

I used the public arrest record to find his name, and then found MB on facebook. I figured he would be perfect to talk to, since he was a member of the NORML facebook group and all. We facebook messaged a few times before I called him for an interview.

Flash forward to the present. Seems MB's mom found the article and asked him about it. He claimed he never knew the article would be printed in the O'Colly and that I tricked him. So his mommy called the O'Colly to have them correct this error. She even forwarded our facebook messages that showed I never mentioned the O'Colly when I contacted him.

Too bad I ALSO have those messages. Here are a few key messages that dear ole MB forgot to show Mommy:

MB: Dec. 6, 6:00pm "hey, hope that info helped ya out. You think you could email me the final report or somethin, I'm just curious to see what ya find out about this. Thanks"
Me: Dec. 10, 12:00 pm "Yeah, the story is going to run on Wednesday in the paper, hopefully. If not, I can send you a final result."
MB: Dec. 16, 12:22 am "hey, i never got a chance to get the paper on wed. ive been checking the website and it doesn't seem like it has been uploaded yet. if it's not going to get on there can you send it to me. mb@okstate.edu, thanks"

Me: Dec. 16, 1:29 am "sure, i'll send it to you now. the version in the paper was cut down a little bit, so i'll send the full story. thanks again for all your help!"


Umm, maybe this would be a good time to 'fess up to Mommy? Just claim you were too high to remember giving the interview. Heck, that might even be the truth.